Ultrasound assisted intensification of streptomycin production based on fermentation

Process intensification is the best approach to improve processing as there is immense need for sustainable, efficient and cost-effective processes for many chemical and biological industries. Ultrasound is one of the approaches that offer promise because of its safety, environment friendly and energy saving abilities. Ultrasound results in acoustic cavitation leading to several physical and chemical effects including acoustic streaming and enhanced mixing based on turbulence that can increase the desired yield in different bioprocesses. The present work deals with intensification of fermentative production of streptomycin using low frequency ultrasound. The focus is on understanding the effect of processing conditions such as time of ultrasound treatment, power dissipation and duty cycle so as to maximize the yield of streptomycin. The optimized ultrasound (US) parameters for the streptomycin fermentation were established as 4 min US treatment, 40 kHz frequency, 200 W power and 100% duty cycle. It was observed that in the case of fermentation, the US treatment increased the production by around 31% as compared to the control operation in the absence of ultrasound. Overall, the process intensification benefits of using ultrasound have been clearly established for the studied bioprocess as fermentation of streptomycin.